Side A – Yasgrid
Yasgrid felt the timeless moment of magic pull her in. It was impossible that it wouldn’t. She was already there after all, as much a part of the magic as Nia, though from how they spun in ever widening orbits around each other, she had to wonder if that would remain true when they were done.
Speaking into the silence wasn’t possible without time moving to carry her words, but she didn’t need to voice her thoughts to share them with Nia.
“I still can’t get over that this is what you see when you play,” Yasgrid said, gesturing to the endless starscape that engulfed them.
“I thought this was what everyone saw if they messed up and went too far into the music?” Nia asked. She was a candle flame, flickering in a cosmic wind that blew from within her.
“I’ve caught glimpses of this,” Yasgrid said. “Fleeting flashes that I can barely remember. People see more than that from time to time, but it’s never a usual thing.”
“Why? It’s beautiful here isn’t it?” Nia asked.
“It’s transcendent,” Yasgrid said, her spirit expanding with each breath that she wasn’t taking. “It would be so easy to…to become part of it.”
“I know,” Nia said. “I was so afraid I was going to dissolve into nothingness the first time, but you pulled me back from that.”
“I don’t know if I did,” Yasgrid said. “I don’t know if I can. It feels like you’re the one anchoring me here. Without you, I don’t know that I could bear this. I don’t know that seeing this I could still fit back into who I was. I don’t know that I would want to.”
“We’ve got people to talk to though,” Nia said. “And people to be.”
“But this is so vast,” Yasgrid said, the burning lights of cosmos calling to her. “So far beyond any problems we have, so much more than what we are.”
She could be with them. The stars. They were her heritage and her future. Dust and light and grandeur. Within the timeless moment, Yasgrid peered out across the sea of eternity, her cares, her burdens, even Endings mission and resolve falling away to be replaced with pure serenity.
“There’s time for all that later,” Nia said, placing her hands on Yasgrid’s wrists. “Our song isn’t finished, it’s just beginning and the world will be lessened if we miss even one beat of it.”
And like that they were back in the world, the beat carrying them onwards.
Yasgrid looked around at the room and saw it in sharper focus.
Behind her, Osdora’s eyes were widening in surprise.
Across from her, beside Nia, Margrada’s breath was drawing in with amazement.
And in the corner Doctor Prash’s notepad was tumbling from numb fingers.
I think you did it, she said silently to Nia. I think I’m here.
We’re doing it together, Nia said. It’s the song. You’re as much of a part of it as I am.
Yasgrid could feel the music moving through her, lending her projection form and substance.
But not permanence.
This wasn’t going to change what had happened to them.
They hadn’t been taken back from their new lives.
Yasgrid let out a small, relieved breath.
Side B – Nia
Yasgrid hadn’t appeared from nowhere. It wasn’t as though one moment she wasn’t there and the next she was. The music suggested that she’d always been there, or at least been sitting with them for as long as Nia had and that the rhythm had done nothing more than draw the others attention to her.
“You’re not the same,” Margrada said, glancing slowly back and forth between Nia and Yasgrid.
“You’re right,” Doctor Prash said, walking forward to get a better view as Nia continued to play. “But I can’t place how.”
“The eyes,” Osdora said. She was behind Yasgrid, unable to see her daughter’s face at all.
Which didn’t matter.
Her gaze was stuck on Nia’s face as though she was seeing it for the first time.
“I don’t see the difference there either,” Prash said, his glances switching from face to face quicker as he spoke.
“I do,” Margrada said. “Hi Yasgrid. It’s been a while I think, hasn’t it?”
“A little less for me than you,” Yasgrid said. “I’ve seen you a few times when I visited Nia.”
“We would never have gotten together would we?” Margrada asked.
“What you’ve found in Nia, you wouldn’t have found in me,” Yasgrid said, and half turned without rising to look back at Osdora.
“Hi Mom,” she said. “Sorry we didn’t explain this sooner.”
Osdora drew in a breath and steepled her hands in front of her face, covering her mouth and whatever expression was trying to break through there.
“Yasgrid,” she finally said, letting a hand drop to reach for Yasgrid’s shoulder.
She stopped a few inches away though, uncertainty sending a tremor through her fingers.
“It’s okay Mom,” Yasgrid said and reached her hand up to hold her mother’s. “It’s really me.”
Wordlessly, Osdora sank down off the table she’d been sitting on and collapsed into a hug that swallowed Yasgrid completely.
Nia kept playing, the magic flowing so naturally through her that her hands moved all on their own through the simple rhythm she’d found.
“I didn’t know we could do this,” Yasgrid said. “I thought using the drums for anything like this would be way too dangerous.”
“It is,” Osdora’s words came out in a tearful laugh. “This is…we shouldn’t…but I had to…”
“It feels right,” Nia said. “I don’t know if I could do this with anyone else, or, no, I know for sure I couldn’t do this with anyone else, but with Yasgrid? With Yasgrid I think the rules are different.”
“You can stay?” Osdora asked.
“Only as long as Nia keeps drumming,” Yasgrid said. “But I won’t be gone when she stops. I can be here. Whenever I need to be.”
“Just like I can be with her, whenever she needs me,” Nia said.
“You haven’t lost me Mom,” Yasgrid said. “You’ve just gained another daughter.”